


Last Chance

by chordatesrock



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: "emphasizin ur wimminz" should be a canonical tag, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bechdel Test Pass, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Female Characters, Gen, Implied Future Character Death, Noncanonical Character Death, POV Female Character, Spoilers, blatantly setting up for a sequel, death of a character who dies in canon but under different circumstances, emphasizin ur wimminz, multiple character deaths, noncanonical acquisition of disability, not dealt with at all because the story is too short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:58:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chordatesrock/pseuds/chordatesrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tess storms the metal head nest and so does Ashelin. Keira loses everyone she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for shyrstyne (on LJ), who wanted BAMF!Tess. BAMF Tess is BAMF, and so is Ashelin, to a lesser degree.

Tess took the whack-a-metal-head machine apart for the hidden artifact. She left the Hip-Hog by the back way, hoping she wouldn’t run into Krew or anyone else. That was exactly who she ran into: Krew, returning from his top-secret official business.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. “Your shift’s not over.”

Tess was about to answer when a metal head fell on Krew from the roof.

“You can’t hurt me, eh? I work for your leader!” he shouted, trying to pull it off him. He gasped. Then he screamed.

Wanting her hands free and having no useful pockets, Tess jammed the artifact into her top, which didn’t even begin to conceal it, and ran for her zoomer. A metal head stood between her and the zoomer. She sped up. When it leapt for her, she punched it in the unprotected part of its stomach. Its claws raked her, but she shoved past it and got into her zoomer. She hit the button for the high hover zone and sped away.

The Port was overrun by metal heads. She called Torn while she flew and told him what had happened (and what Krew had said). Below her, civilian corpses gave way to KG warring with metal heads while everyone else waited behind closed doors. As she went north, the metal heads thinned out. There was no real front line, but they seemed to be advancing slowly. By the time she reached the stadium, she’d outrun them, for a while.

Keira was waiting for her with the rift rider.

“What happened to you?” Keira asked as Tess handed over the artifact. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I just had a little problem with a metal head. That’s all.” Tess laughed it off. She wanted to sigh in relief and let her guard down, but just because she was away from the metal heads for a moment didn’t mean this was over.

As Keira put the finishing touches on her rift rider, Brutter arrived with a lurker balloon carrying several of the Underground’s best surviving fighters and a kid.

“You should go stay safe,” Tess told Keira.

“I need to help load the rift rider,” said Keira. “It’s too heavy for you to move on your own.”

Brutter and the members of the Underground disembarked to help lift the rift rider, except the Shadow, who stood a little way off to supervise.

Keira was staring at him.

“Father?” she asked, sounding shocked. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not your father and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Shadow. “Now, if we don’t get this invention of yours into the air soon, the metal heads will be here.”

They got to work lifting it up onto the lurker balloon. As soon as the rift rider was secure, Keira started up again. “I know you’re--”

Torn’s communicator buzzed to life. “Who--?”

“It’s Vin. There’s no time. They’re about to break down the door to the Power Station and Kor is-- AAAAH!” They heard a crash, a clatter, and the grunting of hungry metal heads.

“Vin!”

There was no answer.

“What are you doing here?” Keira asked the Shadow. 

“I’m here to take the kid to the past in your rift rider,” he said.

“What? _You’re_ the Shadow? But then--”

“Metal heads!” Tess shouted. A handful of stingers were coming up from the south. “Your garage is safe, right? Run!”

Keira stood frozen for a moment. “But if the Shadow is...” She frowned. Then she looked at the metal heads. Finally, she ran.

The balloon lifted off out of reach.

“I wonder what Keira was going to say,” the Shadow mused.

As they floated, Torn offered Tess a blaster rifle and a KG helmet with a missing face shield.

“Thanks, sweetie.” She gave him her best smile. Not going into the metal head nest unarmed and unarmored would be nice. Maybe she’d even survive.

When they were almost over the nest, they could see the Krimzon Guard attacking.

“My friend in the Guard told me they were planning to attack on two fronts to trap the metal heads in the middle,” said Torn.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said someone Tess had never met before. Below them, what had to be the entire KG force was concentrated on a single front on the north side of the metal head nest.

“That’s definitely more than half the guard,” said Torn.

“I wonder why they’re all together,” said Tess. “I bet Baron Praxis scoped this place out before he decided to attack. Maybe he was too scared to send the Krimzon Guard around the other side.”

“Whatever it is, we have the kid,” said the Shadow. “Once we reach the rift gate and I take him to the past, we’ll be able to return and help you. Speaking of which, it’s down there.”

Brutter guided the balloon down. Tess held her breath as they floated in through a tunnel barely tall enough for them to avoid scraping the ceiling. The Shadow and the kid got into the rift rider.

The tunnel opened onto a room full of metal heads. Brutter tried to keep them above the metal heads’ reach as the rift rider lifted off. Flying metal heads rose from the pit in the center of the room. Tess shot one down. Her boys picked off two more, but there seemed to be no limit to the number rising up to meet them.

Torn doubled over from a blast of dark eco. Tess planted herself in front of him. They didn’t need to hold out much longer. Just until the Heir of Mar came back for them.

The rift rider disappeared into the rift. The gate broke apart and fell to the ground in pieces. Tess shot down another metal head and prayed.

Part of the south wall crashed into the room. Something bone-white leapt in through the opening and cut a path through the metal heads, trailing dark eco. It dealt with the flightless metal heads on its own, and distracted the flying ones while Tess and the others took them down.

Brutter lifted the balloon up higher. The creature glanced at them with pitch-black eyes, then ran through the tunnel out of the room.

“That was helpful.”

“I wonder if the Shadow is trapped,” said Tess. “He should be here by now, shouldn’t he?”

“We’ll wait here,” said Torn. “If he doesn’t show up in a couple of minutes, we’ll leave.”

Brutter landed the lurker balloon. Tess sat down. Something sparkled on the wooden platform. She picked it up. The kid had lost his amulet. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

“So, what was that white thing?”

“Brutter might know!” Brutter proclaimed. “Lurkers tell stories about humans who tried to control dark eco and turned white when they finally did it. The lurker stories say the evil humans were locked away in a dark eco silo and nobody know if they are dead or alive. The lurker stories say lurkers should always be on the lookout for those humans to return.”

“That thing didn’t look human to me,” said Torn.

They waited. Nothing happened. When the metal heads started to come back, they left.

 

On the north side of the metal head nest, Ashelin saw a balloon pass overhead, flying toward the city. She almost called out a warning, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She tried to stay conscious. It was a losing battle.

“Captain!” shouted a medic, kneeling beside her with a health pack. “This isn’t enough for...”

She must have passed out, because suddenly the eco was flowing into her shoulder and she was forcing her eyes open. She tried to sit up, but found herself so dizzy she sank back down. Tender new skin already covered the wound where her arm had been, and the eco must have helped replace lost blood if she was alive at all, but it wasn’t enough.

She found her blaster lying on the ground beside her and picked it up in her left hand. Before she could say anything, the medic was gone, running off to help someone else. If she had more green eco-- or just a drink of water...

She shot a metal head that mistook her for food. Besides that one, there didn’t seem to be any more. She forced herself as far upright as she could manage at the moment to look around. The Krimzon Guard was pulling back, but the few metal heads following them seemed to be running from something else.

Ashelin wasn’t sure she could get away from it, whatever it was. She lay back down.

“Get the Dark Warrior sedated!” her father ordered.

The Dark Warrior. Her father’s secret project. He’d said the Dark Warrior would fight alongside them, but he’d also said they would attack the nest on two fronts, and that this would be an easy win.

Erol screamed. Ashelin ignored that. She couldn’t do anything for him.

There was a very human laugh. Her father gasped. She heard him start to shout and quiet himself suddenly.

She sat up, meaning to step in and save him. It made her dizzy. For a moment, she just waited to get her bearings. Then she looked for her father and saw that the Dark Warrior was crouched over him, pale skin covered in blood and eco.

After what had to be too long, she took aim at the Dark Warrior and fired. She missed.

A Krimzon Guard came up behind it and grabbed its arm. Someone else went in quickly and managed to empty a syringe of something into the Dark Warrior.

“I got a vein!” he shouted. The Dark Warrior’s claws raked the man’s throat. Then it fell limp on top of her father.

A medic ran to them with health packs. The man with the slit throat sat up and caught his breath. Baron Praxis didn’t. Nor did Erol.

Ashelin had to be the one to order them to fall back. She was so fuzzy and tired she didn’t know if she could.

They had to get back to Haven City. And what else? They had to tend the wounded. Ashelin was still one of those.

Oh, and there was the Dark Warrior to deal with.

She took a deep breath and went over it all in her mind before she ordered the retreat.

 

After the battle and after a night’s rest, Krimzon Guard Commander Torn escorted Tess and Keira to the Fortress. The cell doors were locked into the open position, and several people had left already. With so many records fabricated, it was too much work to figure out who was actually a criminal and who wasn’t, so Baron Ashelin had issued a blanket pardon.

The Fortress was full of people looking for long-lost loved ones. Torn showed Keira and Tess to what had been reworked into an infirmary on short notice. Then he left.

Samos was at the end of the row of beds. Keira squeezed Tess’s hand for comfort before she walked over to sit beside him.

“Daddy,” she said, wanting him to hold her and make everything okay, and knowing he couldn’t do that.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, Keira,” he said. “You tried to warn me, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Tess, this is my daughter, Keira. I bequeath all of my possessions to her.”

Keira’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re not dying, Daddy,” she said, trying to sound like that was ridiculous instead of terrifying. “You’ll be fine.”

“I hope so. Just know that I’m proud of you, whatever happens.”

“I know,” she said. She took his hand and leaned toward him and started talking about things. About the races and about her zoomers and how hard it was to find all the parts for the rift rider. About how much she missed him, and how happy she was to see him again, how everything was going to be okay now.

He laughed weakly. “Of course it will be. You should talk to Ashelin about your work. She might need someone with your skills. Speaking of which, she’ll be recruiting new Krimzon Guard. Tess, you should think about joining.”

“No way,” Tess said immediately. “I think I’ll design pretty clothes from now on. That’s not scary like metal heads.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Samos. “I know you live for excitement.”

“Well, _maaaybe_ ,” she said, smiling.

“So, where is Jak?” asked Samos. “Have you heard from him?”

“A while ago, the last time a member of the Underground broke into the Fortress, Jak sent me a message telling me he needed help. So now that Baron Ashelin has freed everyone...”

“He’s not here,” said Samos. “I’ve asked after him. I’ve seen everyone who needed medical attention, or else I would have healed myself. And I know he isn’t among the other prisoners, or he would have answered when I had them ask for him over the intercom. He’s either escaped or...”

But he hadn’t escaped.

He was gone.


End file.
